Illustration of a UFO flying saucer above a US highway. Photograph: Digital Art/CORBIS

It was enough to bring a tear to a bug-eyed monster. "We are not," said a member of the British Science Fiction Association, half-nostalgically, "the proud and lonely ones that we were." Apparently, the image of the SF fan began a perceptible change when the Russians shot their first sputnik into space. "There was," it is recalled, "a great sigh of satisfaction amongst us when that happened."

Now, with all the talk of moonshots, the SF enthusiast has lost much of his aura of lonely eccentricity with which he gamely cushioned himself against ridicule. Most SF fans have accepted, and even enjoy, the new-found acceptability which they are accorded, but there remain some who at very least, will wear long beards or long manes to demonstrate their apartness.

A fan – and an SF fan scarcely acknowledges the existence of any other sort of fan – will, if he is particularly fannish (their word), attend the annual convention of the British Science Fiction Association. This year's convention at a Birmingham hotel ended last night. As a demonstration of apartness, one member wore a cardboard placard of badges and mottoes, and another a badge the size of a saucer.

The guest of honour was an American author, Mr Harry Harrison, who spoke from beneath a crystal chandelier and in front of a nicely contrasting picture of a green-eyed monster. To the accompaniment early on of the Salvation Army band outside the hotel window, he gave a rundown on writers who will be attending a world SF convention in London in August.

"A very nice fellow with horrible attributes … He has a moustache just like mine, only nastier … He has been a literary editor, publisher, agent, writer, but he has one slight handicap. He has no literary judgment."

This performance goes on for an hour, during which he barracks the Salvation Army band, throws a meat pie at a friend in the back row, ignores a boy who is playing with a large black toy spider in the third row and makes a few esoteric asides to one or two fellow professional authors.

Mr Brian W Aldiss, a British writer, says in a question-time session: "It is one of the myths of science fiction writing that you have to be original." He said he had been speculating about plot treatment that might have been used over the years for the story of the recent communication received by the Russians from outer space.

In 1928, it would have been written into a long, gripping novelette. However, not until chapter five would anyone get down to building a bigger wireless. By 1935, the whole of Scotland would be taken over for an enormous wireless receiver and the world would be wiped out. In 1965, no one would ever get the message from outer space because the chap who was supposed to take the message would be preoccupied in seducing someone else's wife.